


Daisies for the Queen of the Dead

by ink_magpie



Series: Daisies for the Queen of the Dead [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Character Death, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Dead Pirate, Everyone is Dead, F/M, Gothic, Heaven, Hell, Magic, Magical Realism, One Shot, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Pirates, Rating: M, Resolved Sexual Tension, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-24
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-15 12:30:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17528759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ink_magpie/pseuds/ink_magpie
Summary: The Queen of the Dead learns what it's like to live and lose.





	Daisies for the Queen of the Dead

If you were to look up and stare at the stars all night, you’d notice that they move.  All of them spinning and spiralling overhead from dusk until dawn; waltzing in the dark.  Not a stagnant pool of stars, but a flowing one.

All except one.

                There’s one star that stands firm while the others turn around it – like winds around the eye of a hurricane – and that star is called _Polaris_ ; the North Star.  When we look up at that pin-prick of light, we are gazing into the future, at our own death.  For one day, we’ll all call Polaris our home and know it by its true name – _Amaranthine_ – the realm of the Queen of the Dead.   Her vast castle sits on a small isle on the edge of the silver river, a vast ocean that separates the land of the living and the dead.  Time cannot breach those stone walls; the sun will never rise through the stained-glass windows, the candles in the chandeliers will never melt and dust will never settle upon or age the furniture.  In fact, age has no meaning there at all.

                For an eternity, the Queen had sat on her throne, welcoming the dead who arrived at court.  They’d wash up on the black beaches of the distant shore – dazed and confused – and the Queen would send her ships out across the dark, still waters of the silver river by candlelight to fetch the stray souls before they went back into the water and were lost forever.  Once brought to the castle, the dead would want for nothing and laughed and danced through the mirrored halls and corridors, reminiscing about their lives as if recalling a half-remembered dream.

                The Queen, however, was troubled by the descriptions of the vivid world they’d left behind, a world she’d never experienced herself.  She’d only known the dark.  She listened with a kind smile when they described the different flowers and weeds that had grown in their gardens, or pointed to the scars on their body and told her how much they’d bled.  Her violet eyes widened when they talked about the seasons; about storms that roared and fractured the sky with light, summer dawns and frosts that turned lakes into mirrors.  They told her about how time changed their bodies; she’d stare at her reflection and try to imagine her long dark hair weaved with threads of grey and her smooth skin freckled and wrinkled.  Even more curious was the way the dead described those they’d left behind; as if they’d left a part of themselves with them, or brought a part of them along.  When they spoke about them it was as if their words bridged the impossible and brought them into being out of the black; like rabbits from a magician’s hat.  She didn’t understand why or how that was, and it frustrated her. 

                With every story her world became darker, lonelier.  She was an immortal surrounded by ghosts and yet she’d never felt more dead and sunk into a hollow sort of sadness.  She stopped sending her ships to the distant shore and locked herself in her room.

                Her Captains – who had once been lost souls themselves – became angry.  None more so than Captain Kane, a man who in his short lifetime had barely set foot on dry land save for the day he died.  The court – with its balls and banquets – was of little interest to him; as soon as his ship – _The Wanderer_ – docked and dropped off its cargo of lost souls, he was eager to lift anchor and return to the sea of stars and remind himself how he once sailed his ship safely through a hurricane off the coast of Florida with a hold full of Spanish gold.  In death, he’d found a new purpose, but without it now he paced around the castle like a caged lion.

                Eventually, he decided to confront the Queen, and surged up the stairs to her room in the sea-battered boots that had danced on air the day he’d died. 

                He pounded the door with his fist and was surprised when it gave up and creaked inwards.

                Lit by hundreds of candles, the room was more splendid than any he’d seen in his lifetime or could buy with stolen gold; all silk, silver and stone.  The vast bed was an empty tangle of sheets, while a triptych of gold mirrors in the corner had been shattered.  The stone walls had been scratched with drawings.  Strange-looking flowers climbing down the wall and around the bed. 

He trod carefully over the broken glass and made his way to the balcony, the doors of which were open while gauze curtains floated inwards as if caught forever on an invisible breeze.

                “…Majesty,” he growled as he stepped out into the eternal night.

                He found her naked and leaning over the balcony, peering down the cliff edge to where the sky lapped at the rocks.  His blue eyes widened.

                She didn’t turn to face him.  “…Leave me alone,” she replied, a shake in her voice.

                Kane frowned, his gaze tracing the tapered ends of her hair dangling at the base of her spine.  Hair that just was, that never grew.  “…You need to send the boats out,” he insisted gruffly.

                “…No.”

                Kane shifted his weight from one boot to the other.  He’d never liked taking orders.  “… _No_?  What d’you mean, ‘ _No_ ’?” he barked.  “There’s people out there waitin’ for–”

                She turned suddenly, but found she had to lift her gaze an extra foot to look him in the eye.  He loomed over her like a tower.  Still, “I said, _no_ ,” she snapped.

                “…Why?” he demanded.

                She gave him a curious look.  “Must there be a reason?” she scoffed.  “I am Queen–”

                “Of the Dead.  Yeah,” Kane interrupted with a nod.  He took a step closer, scowling down him nose at her.  “And where are your dead, my lady?  Can’t be a Queen without subjects to rule.”

                The Queen looked at the Captain for a moment, then reached up and cupped his face in her hands.  She glimpsed another world simply by looking at his skin.  She could see the sunlight trapped inside it, feel the weather – brine from the sea – in its creases and matted in the brown hair falling across it.

                Kane recoiled like a wild horse as the tips of her fingertips grazed the snarled hair along his chin.  His gaze irritable, unsure until he saw sadness in her eyes.

                She lifted his chin to look at his throat, to inspect the angry scar he wore around his neck just like the leather necklaces and charms hanging below it.  “…How did you get this mark?” she asked, brushing her thumb over the bruises.

                Kane softened a little.  “…I was a very bad boy,” he told her, his eyes roaming.

                The Queen looked up and waited for him to explain, and for a moment she thought he might, but then – for whatever reason – he seemed to change his mind.

                Kane gently grabbed her wrists and lowered them.  “…Send out the boats, or I will,” he warned her, then turned on his heel and walked away.

               

* * *

 

When the Queen failed to give the word for the boats to go, Captain Kane went without it.  He took his crew and the lamps and pushed off from the dock, setting sail across the stars, bound for the black sands of the distant shore.  But while the crew busied themselves pulling souls from the water, Kane dropped anchor and went ashore.

As his boots plunged into the wet sand and his eyes scanned the lonely shoreline, he realised he hadn’t set foot upon that sand since first washing up himself; spluttering on his back with a hand around his throat and a curse upon his lips.  He reached down and grabbed a fistful of sand, and when he loosened his fingers he watched as the dark grains bled out from between them. 

How had he arrived there?  From where?

He started to walk, following the shoreline.  It was a desolate spit of sand – a barren, deserted island surrounded by stars – and he soon found himself standing at the ship’s anchor again, in the same spot he’d set out from.  He’d seen an endless archipelago of islands in his lifetime, but none as empty as this one.  Nothing to be seen; not even clumps of seaweed or rotting driftwood.

Cargo loaded and shivering in the hold, Kane took the helm and gave the order to set sail for Amaranthine.

But when they arrived, he didn’t stay for long; as soon as the cargo had been offloaded, the anchor was raised and they set off into the darkness once again, but this time without a destination in mind.

The Wanderer drifted through the dark; stars above, stars below.  It was hard to know the depth of the Silver River, or know the height of the sky, or whether the water reflected the sky, or held stars of its own beneath the murky waves.  When they found souls bobbing like flotsam, they picked them up.  First there was just one, then there were two, then three, and soon enough a pattern emerged; a trail of water-logged breadcrumbs leading the way through the waves.

At the end of the trail was a vast maelstrom; a swirling doorway into darkness unlike anything Kane had ever seen.  And, thrilled by the prospect of adventure and reminded of the hurricane, he grasped the helm and sailed the ship straight into it, riding the roaring current to the depths with laughter bubbling from his chest.

 

* * *

 

A persistent knocking on her door disturbed the Queen from her despair.  She tried to ignore it at first – as she had done before – but the knocking grew louder and louder, until the bolts on the door rattled.  Angered, she rose from her bed and stormed towards the door and wrenched it open like a gale, only to find the corridor empty.

                “Who’s there?” she demanded, leaning out to peer around the corner – and as she did so, her bare foot stepped on something soft and cold.

                She looked down and lifted her foot. 

It was something she’d heard of, but had never seen for herself.  _Flowers_.  A tangle of stars on stems, bound with leather.  She bent down and picked up the bundle.  There was something pleasing about the thick green stems – like bones – and the smooth tongues protruding from them at various intervals up the length of them.  Then all those heads, those stars; burning like fire in the centre with white hot sparks surrounding it.  She was surprised when they were soft to the touch – like a plump cushion with silk tassels – and further surprised by the smell of them when she raised them to her nose.  Musky and sweet.

Slowly – and to her own amazement – a smile spread across her lips.

She took them inside and inspected them, unbinding them and poring over each flowerhead one by one.  They were more fragile than she thought.  She frowned when the soft petals came away with the slightest brush of her fingertips and tutted when one of the stems snapped and leaked a clear liquid onto her hands.  _Like blood_ , she thought to herself as she recalled the stories she’d heard about cuts and scars.  But with it she found she could manipulate the flowers; she could create chains of them and made herself a crown and then a necklace and bracelet to match.

The Queen emerged from her room, eager to show off her new jewels.  And as she scaled the staircase to the great hall and perched upon her throne, the dead stared.  Dead eyes filling with memories, like empty glasses spilling over with bubbling champagne.  Including Captain Kane, who watched from the shadows with his arms folded, grinning.  In all his days of pirating, he’d never shared a bounty before, and was surprised at how pleasing it could be.

The Queen waved off the boats once more, and while most set sail for the distant shore, Captain Kane secretly slipped off course and steered brazenly into the maelstrom.  Now, as well as the souls that he found drifting along the way, he added a little contraband to his cargo; stolen from a world he no longer belonged to, frozen as it had been the very moment he’d left it.  He explored it like a market, stealing whatever he wanted; everything he missed most, but gave it all in secret to the Queen.  He filled the great hall of Amaranthine with roses from the gardens of the Queen of France, hibiscus from old haunts around the rock he had once called home, and lion-headed pink peonies pilfered from the gardens of the Forbidden City.  He bottled lightning to illuminate the halls and the corridors of Amaranthine, and enjoyed watching the purple light dancing in the Queen’s surprised eyes.  He poached feathers and fur and cobwebs sparkling with rain, admiring the way she wore them like lace.  Leaves became an obsession of hers.  She marvelled at their variety; the sickly yellow and red stars and frost-coated droplets of Autumn, and the glossy, green tongues of Summer.  He brought perfumes for her; salt water from stormy seas, sweat from the spines of slaves, baked earth from the desert, tears, shards from a glacier, ash from a volcano and fresh blood.  Summer blooms filled the empty palace with their perfume, and it was almost as if the sun had risen again.

Although the Queen revelled in the mysterious gifts she received, she still felt an emptiness inside.

Soon, the flowers – those immortal blooms – began to fade in her eyes.  The cobwebs draped over her shoulders didn’t seem to sparkle as they once had, and the lightning – the jars and bottles draped along the halls like lanterns – wasn’t as sharp or as bright as it had been before.  When she stood naked in front of her mirror and swiped blood around her collar like a necklace and dabbed teardrops on her wrists, she only regretted that the pain would never be hers to feel. 

 

* * *

 

When the Queen shut herself away, Captain Kane was confused and wondered what had changed.  He’d brought her every flower he could find, every scent, every flavour of life he could find for her to savour.  He’d pillaged the world for her, and she was still unsatisfied.  And so, he went to see her; his long legs striding up the staircase two at a time to her rooms in the roost.  Tokens from his travels to the past decorated the corridors along the way and seeing them made anger rise inside of him.

                When he opened the door, he found her standing naked in front of her shattered mirror, gazing at her body, touching it.  Her hands smoothing over her empty belly, climbing up her ribcage and over the soft, pillows of her breast where the tapered ends of her hair fell.  Her eyes flashed briefly at the intrusion his reflection made in her mirror, then resumed their inspection.

                Captain Kane frowned as he hovered in the doorway.  He thought about the first ship he’d ever stepped aboard, the old, Royal Navy barque that had stolen him away to the Indies as a boy and wrecked off Mamana.  He’d always remembered the figurehead; a woman fixed to the prow and bare to the breeze.  Her long, dark hair swirled around her like a crop of seaweed under water, forever being whipped up by the wind.  Such women only existed in wood and lacquer.  The salty, old boatswain would tell him that she held the soul of a goddess and pointed the ship around rocks and through storms.  If the ship sank, he said, she would point their souls onwards to the Land of the Dead. 

After the storm – when he crawled alone out of the waves – he’d come across her arm washed up on the beach; slick with seafoam and splintered at the elbow, her delicate hand – that had once pointed to the horizon – now pointing to the dunes.

And now, here she stood. 

“…What does it feel like to live?” she asked him.

Captain Kane stepped into the room and closed the door.  He shrugged his lips.  “…Like gambling and knowing that you can never win,” he replied gruffly. 

She didn’t understand.

                “The odds are; the longer you’re in for, the more you have to lose.  And the house _always_ wins in the end, anyway,” he explained.

                The Queen swept her hair from her forehead; the skin there was like clean paper, not a wrinkle or a crease in sight.  “I don’t know what it feels like to lose.”

                The Captain’s gaze was hard.  “Then you’re lucky.”

                She turned to face him.  “I don’t feel lucky,” she replied, her eyes dropping to the scar on his neck.  “I feel empty.”

                It occurred to the Captain that perhaps winning wasn’t winning at all until you’d understood what it was to lose.  If he hadn’t been stolen away and survived the wreck, then he wouldn’t have gone on to fill his pockets with plundered gold and sail through a hurricane.  Living was about loss more than anything else, and he suddenly felt sympathy for the Queen.

                “The flowers are beautiful but,” she said, flicking the blooms hanging around her mirror, “I want to watch them die.”

                He growled and shook his head.  “I’ll stop bringing them then, you ungrateful sow,” he grunted.

                She blinked at him, surprised, offended, guilty, amused all at once.  A shadow of a smile appeared on her lips.

                Captain Kane stared at her.

                The Queen reached up and touched his face, smoothing her thumbs across his sea-battered, bronzed skin.  Her eyes joined up his freckles one by one, and then she kissed him.

                The Captain hesitated for moment before he wrapped his arms around her naked body like a shipwreck survivor clinging to flotsam.  He scooped her up and took her to bed.  He left marks all over her body with his hands and lips; none that could ever be seen, only felt.  Scars of passion.

He shared her bed until there were grains of sand and salt upon the sheets, and then he took his ship and sailed away – taking all the otherworldly gifts with him but a single daisy.  When the Queen awoke to find her Captain and her flowers gone, she felt an emptiness fill her until she spilled over with tears.   

                She stepped out onto her balcony and searched the stars.  When she spoke to the dead now, she understood their words.  Finally, she knew what it was to lose.


End file.
